


At the End

by AriadneKurosaki



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Bleach Chapter 686 - Death & Strawberry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriadneKurosaki/pseuds/AriadneKurosaki
Summary: In the end, the black sun and the white moon fall so that the worlds they protect do not.
Relationships: Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	At the End

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being much darker than I originally intended. So, have some Sunday evening sadness, I guess.

Yhwach’s promise echoes through the air as he leaps through the portal. Rukia and Renji rush forward toward Ichigo, whose body is broken. Orihime is healing him beneath the dome of her Sōten Kisshun, and she is crying.

“I couldn’t stop him with my shield,” she whimpers. Rukia wraps a comforting arm around her friend and watches Ichigo’s wounds heal.

“We can’t just let him get away, we have to go,” Renji says as he pulls Zabimaru from his hip.

“You already know we can’t do it without Ichigo,” Rukia chides. Ichigo’s eyes open and the look in his eyes is both relieved and tender as his eyes meet Rukia’s.

“Rukia…”

“I’m here, Ichigo,” she murmurs.

The yellow glow of Sōten Kisshun dissipates and Ichigo sits up, grabbing for his blade. “Yhwach went through the portal. We have to go after him – we have to do it now,” he says, and leaps to his feet.

Ichigo grabs her hand and she stands as well.

Renji and Orihime are both looking at them. “We’re coming with you,” Renji says.

But Rukia shakes her head. “Go back and find the wounded. Orihime’s powers are needed there, and you need to guard her.” When Orihime opens her mouth to object, Rukia says gently, “My bankai will kill you. Go, save who you can.”

Then she kisses Orihime lightly on the forehead. Her free hand touches Renji’s arm lightly. Ichigo ruffles Orihime’s hair and nods at Renji. It feels like they’re saying goodbye.

Then Ichigo and Rukia take off at a run toward the portal. “Rukia,” he says when they are no more than a step away. His eyes catch hers and there is _more_ in them, as there has always been, than just worry for a friend.

“I know.” Her mouth finds his in a hard kiss and then she unsheathes Sode no Shirayuki and awakens her shikai. They turn back to the portal and leap through.

And Yhwach is there, grinning with his too-many-teeth and laughing at them from under his mustache. “My son,” he says. “And one of your weaklings. Is this the best you can do?”

Ichigo just scoffs but Rukia looks up at the touch of a familiar – too familiar – reiatsu, for Aizen is there.

Soul Society’s most powerful prisoner nods to Ichigo and attacks Yhwach, slashing with Kyōka Suigetsu before flying away. But then Rukia can see an image of _herself_ attacking Yhwach and being beaten back, an image of _Ichigo_ leaping forward and losing an arm even though he was right beside her, and –

“ _Now_ , Kurosaki,” Aizen’s voice calls, and Rukia realizes he is using Kyōka Suigetsu’s illusions again.

Ichigo is by her side again and they look at one another before he rushes forward. Ichigo’s Getsuga Tenshō blazes forth in a tidal wave of bright yellow reiatsu. The blast overcomes Yhwach, who screams his pain. Rukia smiles.

And then black energy washes over them all again, and they both know it wasn’t enough. Ichigo falls back by her side and their hands find one another. His mouth finds hers once more and there is a whisper between them ( _I love you. We have to. I know. I love you too._ ) before they part. In the blackness Rukia calls, “ _Bankai. Hakka no Togame.”_ White energy blasts around her and the world is plunged into the bone-breaking cold of absolute zero. She is clad in a white kimono and jewels of ice, and Sode no Shirayuki in her hands is a long, beautiful blade of ice. White ribbon writhes around her form. Her hair is white and her eyes are palest lavender.

Ichigo spares one second to think that her bankai is the most beautiful he has ever seen. His reiatsu is so strong that it partially insulates him from the killing cold, and he leaps for Yhwach. Rukia’s bankai sends a blinding white pillar of ice and reiatsu flaring up around their enemy.

Ichigo’s blade pierces the pillar and injects black reiatsu into it. White light explodes, destroying everything it touches, and the world shakes. Ishida, the only one of their friends close enough to see what’s happening, looks up as the earth bucks under his feet and gets a glimpse of Ichigo and Rukia wrapped around each other before the light engulfs them. He is sent flying through the air by the blast.

Screams echo throughout what’s left of the Seireitei and the whole of the Rukongai as waves of reiatsu radiate outward and wash over Soul Society.

In the World of the Living, the earth shakes and scientists the whole world over report tremors and earthquakes. In Karakura, streets crack open and buildings fall. As far away as England, vases fall from mantels and shatter glass onto wooden floors.

Orihime’s Sōten Kisshun shatters over Urahara and Renji shifts into bankai and calls “Hihio!” quickly. The skeletal arm rises above them and deflects falling debris even as Renji throws himself over Orihime and Urahara both to protect them with his body.

When the shaking stops, Yhwach’s reiatsu is gone. Urahara stirs beneath Renji and says very quietly, “It’s over.”

His words have more than one meaning, as they all discover when the survivors of their battle with the Sternritter make their way through the destroyed streets of the Seireitei to the epicenter of the final battle with Yhwach.

The crater they find has swallowed up the entirety of the Sōkyoku Hill and the Senzaikyū and turned them both to dust. Shards of ice melt on the ground, and there still a chill in the air although it is no longer cold enough to freeze. In the center of the crater is all that remains of Yhwach: a quickly-disintegrating Quincy Cross. Aizen’s remains lie closer to the edge of the crater, as if he tried and failed to escape the blast.

Ichigo and Rukia are gone; only the hilts of their zanpakuto remain. A red ribbon binds them together.

Orihime, who has reached the crater with Renji, screams, and then keeps screaming. Renji just stares blankly, arms keeping her from flinging herself into the crater. Eventually she is sedated by a member of Squad Four.

Uryū, bloodied and battered from being thrown almost twenty yards by the blast, tells them all what he saw: Ichigo and Rukia sacrificing themselves (and Aizen) to destroy Yhwach.

It is Kyōraku who takes his hat from his head and holds it to his chest, then bows low toward the bound hilts. Byakuya follows, and then others do the same, heads bowing down in a sign of thanks and respect for the substitute Shinigami and the Squad Thirteen lieutenant whose deaths have ended the war.

The aftermath of the war is somewhat less respectful. There is a fight amongst the captains over what to do with the hilts of Zangetsu and Sode no Shirayuki: whether to bury them, burn them, or make a memorial of them. The memorial wins, and within a week there is a raised pillar on a grassy hill holding them in a glass case.

Renji holds on by a thread when the hastily erected memorial is unveiled seven days after the end of the war. Ichigo’s friends are there for the unveiling and he has no idea who brought them, but Byakuya stands behind Karin and Yuzu like a sentry of stone. He gets plastered later, in an izakaya that hasn’t been destroyed, and Rangiku carries him back to the Sixth and listens sympathetically. (She never tells anyone what he screams.)

Funerals are held for the dead. They burn the bodies, and though Renji doesn’t exactly expect a funeral for Aizen he does wonder why he has heard no word of the body being burned. The worlds, destabilized by the death of the Soul King, are righted by some unknown means that no one will speak of. All Renji knows, when he tries to ask, is that the faces of anyone involved grow pale and some even turn a little green. He doesn’t ask again, but in the very back of his mind he wonders if the two things are connected.

Byakuya places a picture of Ichigo on his butsudan next to one of Rukia, and lights incense for them both. No one dares to ask where the photo came from or why Ichigo has earned a place on the Kuchiki family altar. There is a rumor about a ghost marriage.

Chad, Uryū, and Orihime go back to the World of the Living with Urahara and Yoruichi when the latter two have recovered. All three look haunted, but the Gotei Thirteen are not in the habit of caring what happens to soldiers, even child soldiers, after the war.

Isshin Kurosaki and Ryuuken Ishida appear back in Karakura Town a month after the war. Isshin takes care of letting the school know about Ichigo’s death (from the earthquake, he says), which allows his friends to mourn publicly. Ichigo’s entire class wears black armbands with their uniforms for 49 days.

Everyone in school is surprised when Orihime enters school to be a nurse. They are even more surprised when Chad decides to become a counselor. No one is surprised when Ishida starts his own fashion business, although the stark black and white theme of his first collection is startling.

In Soul Society, the Gotei Thirteen rebuild. Tetsuzaemon is made Captain of Squad Seven. It is a struggle to find a captain for the Thirteenth, for everyone thought Rukia would succeed Ukitake after his death, not turn to ice and dust. Renji refuses the position.

The squad runs for years with neither captain nor lieutenant through the sheer stubbornness of Kiyone and Sentaro, until Hisagi apparently achieves bankai and agrees to take the captain’s exam. In passing, Renji wonders how the Thirteenth feels about having a captain who looks like two dead men. The answer is “not great”: Kiyone transfers to the Fourth to serve under her sister and Sentarō transfers to the Fifth a month later.

When the Sōkyoku is rebuilt, bigger and worse, in another part of the Seireitei, Renji gets smashed again and this time it’s Kira who drags him back home. Byakuya catches them but just calmly thanks Kira for returning his lieutenant. There is a hangover tisane waiting for him on his nightstand in the morning. Renji’s pretty sure his captain is the one who left it there, and vaguely recalls smelling sake on Byakuya’s breath. Maybe they are both disturbed by it.

Life in the Seireitei goes on as it does in the World of the Living, even with holes in both worlds shaped like a petite Shinigami and her orange-haired substitute. Sometimes when Renji looks at the Sōkyoku or sees one of the monitoring devices that Captain Kurotsuchi has planted around the Seireitei, he wonders what would have happened if they’d lived.

Sometimes – just sometimes – there is mercy in the cycle between the worlds. Time passes: a decade, then three, and then it has been seventy-five years since the war. In a park in Sapporo, near the Hokkaido Shrine that still stands tall amongst the skyscrapers, a young man and woman lounge in the sun. His hair is still orange, and her eyes are still violet, though she is a little taller. There are rings on the fourth finger of her left hand and a matching one on his. They sparkle and shine in the sunlight.


End file.
